Being a big fan of John Carpenter’s The Thing, I am wary but optimistic about the forthcoming prequel directed by Matthijs Van Heijningen Jr.

Looks like it is heading out way sooner than I thought as it starts shooting this Friday according to the LA Times.

The prequel shows us what happened at the Norwegian camp – the survivors of which we see at the beginning of Carpenter’s film.
“That’s the story we tell in this film,” says Marc Abraham, who is producing the movie with his Strike Entertainment partner Eric Newman. “We go back to that original Norwegian camp and try to figure out what happened. It’s like a crime scene, with an ax in the door, and the audience gets to be the detective, trying to piece together what horrible things have occurred.”

With a budget of $38 Million the biggest names are Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton. The cast is populated with actors from Australia, England, Canada and Norway. In fact, a majority of the Norwegian scientists in the film are played by Norwegian actors, who will play their scenes in Norwegian, with English subtitles.

In my opinion this can only be a good thing to make the film more authentic as in the original they Norwegians only speak Norwegian.

Once filming is done it will have lots of effects to do on the film so will be out some point next year, but sounds like they’ve got the right idea.

“One of our all-time favorite films is Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien,’ “ says Abraham. “It’s elegant, really scary and has characters that you care about. In a way, it’s our model for this project, which gives us an opportunity to try to do something cool.”
“I’d be the first to say no one should ever try to do ‘Jaws’ again and I certainly wouldn’t want to see anyone remake ‘The Exorcist,’ “ says Newman. “And we really felt the same way about ‘The Thing.’ It’s a great film. But once we realized there was a new story to tell, with the same characters and the same world, but from a very different point of view, we took it as a challenge. It’s the story about the guys who are just ghosts in Carpenter’s movie — they’re already dead. But having Universal give us a chance to tell their story was irresistible.”

There you have it. Sounds like it could possibly be okay to look forward to the prequel. How do you feel after hearing what they have to say about it?